Poll: Obama would beat Palin in Alaska

Alaska has not voted Democratic in a presidential election since 1964, but President Obama would defeat favorite daughter Sarah Palin there if the election were held today, according a new poll.

The survey of 500 Alaska voters by Hayes Research found 34 percent “strong” for Obama, 6 percent “not so strong” but in the President’s camp, and 2 percent undecided but leaning to Obama.

Palin gets “strong” support from just 25 percent of voters in a state that in 2006 elected her governor. Six percent are “not so strong” Palin backers, with 5 percent undecided but leaning her way.

The poll found 7 percent who would vote for somebody else, and 16 percent genuinely undecided.

Palin boasted an unheard-of 80 percent approval rating among Alaskans in the summer of 2008, when the Alaska governor was tapped by Sen. John McCain as Republican vice presidential nominee.

But she quit as governor in the summer of 2009, and has cashed in on fame with $100,000 speaking gigs, a best-selling autobiography, a reality TV show (“Sarah Palin’s Alaska”) and a commentary job with Fox News.

Polls have shown declining support in her native state. In 2010, Palin supported a Tea Party insurgent, Joe Miller, who upset incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. But Murkowski won reelection as a write-in, the first Senate candidate to do so in 56 years.

Palin is in Iowa today for the premier of an adoring film, “The Undefeated,” that celebrates her political career and damns establishment Republicans for allegedly not defending her in 2008.

She has not declared whether she will seek the Republican presidential nomination.